What Hell hath forged
by RogueGeek
Summary: A story detailing some of Dean's time spent in hell; his thoughts, what he went through and what caused him to break. Rated M for strong language and gore.
1. Chapter 1

The days - at least I think they were days ... there was no concept of day here, only pain and no pain - were blending together. Everything I wanted to forget was being burned into my memory and all the things I wanted to remember, I couldn't. Even when I'd close my eyes and try, they were just like shadows; fleeting things in the corners of my eyes. I would try to look, dart my eyes, but they'd disappear. They weren't real and as much as I called out, yelled out, screamed out - nothing could make them real.

Steel wasn't a figment of my imagination, though. It was cold and it was sharp and it cut into me. It tore me open so that I could feel the blood on my skin, slick and wet. Hot. I could smell it when it dripped down my face and onto my lips. I could taste it. Every instrument that he used, I could remember; how long it was, how sharp it was, where he slid it into my skin and carved me. He would cut me until I was nothing left, not human any more, just a pile of meat and then he would smile and I would be myself and he would start all over. The pain would blend and flow together so that sometimes it seemed like I never knew anything but hurt. I knew that I had once lived a life where hurt was fleeting and would bite angrily when new, but fade away to nothing. Here, though, pain locked its jaws around my throat and tore at me, trying to make me scream. He would urge me to scream, that bastard. He would tell me that he would put me back in my cell if I would just scream. He longed to hear it, I think. It was like some kind of drug to him.

I remember him looking at me, tipping his head to one side as he contemplated where to stick his goddamned knife next. He would trace it over my skin, following the line of my muscles. When he first started doing this, I would flinch. It was completely out of instinct; trying to pull my body away from the razor sharpness, and he would laugh at me. His mouth would open in a grin like a slick of oil on a puddle, the expression sliding across his face but never quite making it up to his eyes. And then he would start to cut.

When he was finished, he'd always make me the same offer. He'd say that I could get down off the rack, never feel the sting of his knives again, if I would just pick up a weapon and turn it on another soul. He tempted me with this, dangled my freedom from pain like a carrot in front of my face. And every day I would tell him to stick his knives up his ass. With every ounce of strength and every breath, I would tell him to go fuck himself. He would laugh and pull me down from wall and send me back to my cell to wait for the next session. And when the door of my prison closed, I would lay there and I would cry because that's what I felt like I should do. I cried to keep myself human because each day I felt a little of that humanity slip away from me.

I would feel the tears slipping down my cheeks and I would fall to the ground, kneeling beside the small bench that I used for sleeping. My hands clutched at my hair and I remember speaking. "God," my voice choked, barely understandable through the thick sounds of my sobs. "God, help me - I can't take this. I can't..." But what good did it do? I never prayed when I was upstairs, why should it matter if I started now. The problem was, I didn't know what else to do. I didn't know how to keep from turning into exactly what the butcher wanted me to be. Every small hope, even the vague ones, had to be kept alive and close. Talking to God was just one of those pinpricks of light that made a tiny dent in the dark.

Every day I would pray; pray for strength, pray for forgiveness, pray for mercy. I would pray to stay human. I remember praying silently while I was up on the rack; I thought that my pain would reach up and give strength to what I wanted. But I think I was fooling myself because the pain never stopped through divine intervention. The pain only stopped when the butcher decided he'd had enough. He was the only one who could take my hurt away. In my fevered mind, in the throes of an agony that I'd never experienced before, I realized that I should be praying to him. I opened my eyes and stared at him. He was smiling as he selected a knife from the table and ran his eyes over the blade. I could see he was thinking about how I'd fight to keep my cries of pain silent. He loved watching me tremble and shake; he loved waiting for me to say the words that he wanted to hear. I think the anticipation was part of the game for him, that sick bastard.

And that's how the days blended into one another. Each one was the same mix of pain and fear and blood. The same offer flowing off his lips, the same promise of freedom if I'd just do what he wanted me to do and carve some of my own anger onto another soul.

But I couldn't. I just - I couldn't.

I could feel Alastair's eyes on me and I swear that they were almost as sharp as the knife in his blood-spattered fingers. He had a contemplative, disappointed look on his face as he wiped the blade off on a greying cloth and then put it down. "Dean," he said. His voice was low and cold and I didn't like the way he said my name; it had a ring of familiarity and intimacy in it. It twisted my stomach. "I don't understand you. Every day it's the same goddamn thing. I carve and cut and slice and you pretend that it doesn't effect you." His lips turned upwards in a slow smile. "But you forget, I can see inside you. I can see how much pain you're in. You know how to make it stop, don't you? You know what you have to say."

My arms were both strung up above my head and my toes just barely grazed the dirt ground of the torture room. My head was lolled forward, my chin resting on my chest and I could smell the blood that covered my torso; thick and metallic. Alastair had been with me for hours, carving me and putting me back together more times than I could count. He was paused now, in mid-session, and he was standing in front of me, too close to comfort. He put his hand under my chin and lifted my head so that I could look into his eyes. I tried to jerk away from him but his fingers tightened painfully around my jaw, forcing my gaze to him.

"Whaddaya say, Dean?" Smile like a snake, his eyes boring into mine. "Wanna see how it feels to be on the other side of the knife?"

My chest heaved with each breath I took and I could feel my jaw tense. "Gonna have to do better than that, Alastair. I think you're off your game today, I've barely felt anything. If I didn't know you were the one slicing and dicing, I would have sworn it was a little pansy bitch." My voice sounded harsh to my own ears, not my own voice. The voice of someone in pain that could hardly be imagined.

Alastair pulled his hand back and he let my head drop back down. "Oh, Dean - you disappoint me." His voice was deadpan and he picked up a large knife, turning it over in his hands. "I'm offering you a perfectly adequate solution to your little," he paused, searching for the right word, "predicament, and here you are turning my hospitality down. It's like a slap in the face, kid." He punctuated his words by shoving the knife, all seven inches of blade, into my stomach and twisting it. His face close to mine as if he wanted to inhale my own exhalation of pain.

A guttural scream wanted to escape from my throat but I managed to keep it down to a strangled grunt even though it meant biting down on my bottom lip hard enough to draw a crescent of blood. The taste of it was familiar but far from comforting. Alastair looked perplexed, but not terribly surprised. As much as he relished my screaming, and I knew he did, it wasn't something I did a lot of. I wouldn't give him that pleasure.

"Doesn't this hurt, Dean?" Alastair pulled the knife down through my stomach. The skin split as he did this, opening me up. "Don't you want me to stop?" He wasn't dressed the way you think a butcher would have been; his blue dress shirt and black pants were more at home in a board room then in a torture den. But the flecks of gore on the material looked like someone had been playing Spin Art with my blood.

My body wanted to double over in pain but with my hands tied above my head, there was nothing I cold do. I drew in breath after breath and kept my head down so that Alastair wouldn't see the the pain in my eyes. If he did, he would have latched onto like a leech and made it unbearable. As it was now, I was just barely hanging on. A choked sob gurgled up and I could taste copper mixed with my saliva. I spit and saw that it was mostly red; bright red - it was disconcerting. I didn't think blood should be that vibrant. After all, I'd seen all sorts of blood come out of me but the blood that I spit up always seemed to be the wrong shade of crimson.

Alastair stepped back from me and regarded me seriously, like a painter looking at his masterpiece. His sleeves were rolled up to his elbows and he had the knife poised as if he was going to make another cut but he couldn't figure out just where. "You know, Dean," he said. "Every time you come in here, you make a mess of this place. Your blood, it gets over everything and then I have to clean up. Why don't you save me the trouble and just say yes. It'll be easier on us both."

I dragged my gaze up to meet his eye and I stared at him without saying anything. He thought his taunts were weakening my resolve; breaking me down even more than the knives and the needles, but he was wrong. "You know, I would tell you go to hell - but I think the insult would be lost on you." I forced my lips in a smirk even though smiling was the last thing I felt like doing at that minute.

Watching Alastair's expression change was an interesting process. His eyes narrowed first, they got small and mean, and then his mouth turned into a thin line. One eyebrow arched just slightly as he rubbed his hand across his lips. "Always know the wrong thing to say, don't you?" he sneered and like a flash he was at my side again. He had picked up a new knife; this one was small and mean looking. Like a de-boning knife or something. The thin blade had just a tiny amount of curve to it and the metal was flexible and cruel. He cut with surgeon precision, slipping the point under my skin and dragging it along my chest, following the curve of my collar bone and then down the sides of my torso.

The skin, oh God, the skin started to fall away as Alastair pulled strips of it off. He would hold them up so that I could see and then he would throw them down, his face frozen in a smile the whole time. I couldn't stop it this time, I couldn't stop the scream that tore my throat. I sounded like a wounded animal, all rage and pain and fear with nothing to lash out against. My body jerked in the bonds as I tried to pull myself down from the wall. And Alastair kept on skinning.


	2. Chapter 2

When I opened my eyes, I was back in the small room that was my prison cell. My body spasmed in remembrance of the session with Alastair and I ran my hands over my chest frantically to make sure that I was whole again. The skin was smooth and there was no slick trace of blood to be felt. Whatever Alastair had done to me, he had at least put me back together at the end of it all. I stood shakily and rested my head against the smooth black stone that made up the door and I sighed. I know, I know - I had no one to blame for my problems but myself. It was my own fault that I was down here and playing chew-toy for a seriously fucked up demon. But even in my darkest moments, I never regretted the course of action that had pulled me down to hell. I could never hold anything like that against Sam; it wasn't his fault that he was the way he was and it wasn't his fault that I used my soul as a bargaining chip to bring him back to life. Besides, I reasoned, life without Sam would have been a kind of living hell anyways, so being downstairs wasn't actually much different.

Well, you know, except for the endless days of torture.

And, by that point, it really did feel like endless days. I had been in hell for a long time; a lifetime, almost. When I tried to remember how things had been upstairs I had a hard time doing it. The only thing I truly kept in my memory was Sam's face because if I didn't have that then I probably would become exactly what Alastair wanted me to become., but even that was becoming more difficult

The thought of Sam's disapproval was, by that point, the only thing I was hanging on to as a way to stay human. I could see the way he would look at me and how his lips would purse just slightly as he'd get that judgemental gleam in his eye. I smiled a lot when I thought about Sam; the things that used to piss me off about him when I was upstairs didn't seem to matter down here. I would have given just about anything to see him. It was enough, though, knowing that he was alive. What I did to save Sam from death, I'd do it again in a heartbeat. Even knowing what I knew about hell and what was waiting for me, I wouldn't hesitate even one minute. My soul was nothing compared to Sam's; I wished he understood that.

I stepped away from the door and sat back down on the bench, letting my head hit the wall with a 'thunk' that really should have been painful, but I didn't feel anything. Compared to Alastair's knife, hitting my head hard enough to give myself a concussion barely registered on my 'that hurts' meter.

I closed my eyes and tried to bring Sammy's face to my mind but it wasn't easy. I could see the individual features; the warm brown eyes, the hair that never seemed to lay flat and the mouth that could either beam in a sunny smile or look pinched and angry, often within the space of a few moments. But it took me too much time to pull all those features together into the face that I spent my whole life looking after. Something clenched in my chest, a twist that was more painful than anything that Alastair had done to me, and my head dropped forward. I could feel the hot tears on my cheeks and I passed my hand over my eyes to wipe them away but they kept coming.

"Sammy," I choked and looked up at the ceiling of the cell, "Sammy - get me out of here. I know you can do it, you just - you just gotta try. Do something, Sam, please because I don't know how much longer I'm gonna last down here."

The tears got worse and my throat felt tight as I doubled over and closed my arms around myself. I didn't think I would stop crying that night.

***

Alastair looked a little too happy to see me when I was pulled into his den of depravity at the start of a session. His blue eyes were bright, sparkling and he kept looking at me like he was holding some kind of secret in that he just couldn't wait to surprise me with. The two demon mooks dragged me over to the wall and strung my arms up in the familiar position and then left without a word.

The atmosphere in the room seemed different today and I kept staring at Alastair as he looked over his tools, letting his fingertips run over the sharpened edges of the blades or picking them up and eyeing them carefully. I stared at the butcher wondering why he seemed so giddy and he looked over, catching my eye.

"We're doin' something a little different today, Dean," he said, rubbing a hand across his chin and then down the front of his black shirt like he was smoothing away imaginary wrinkles. "You get to watch."

I didn't like this; I didn't like the way he was looking at me with that anticipatory gleam in his eye. It made something jump in my stomach; a twist of fear that was unlike the usual dread I felt when I was dragged in for the butcher to carve. That fear was easy to ignore and push down but this was different and I glared at Alastair, wondering what he was cooking up in that sick, twisted mind of his.

He was standing next to me now; his hands gathered in my hair pulling my head down so that it was close to his. "Aren't you excited, kid?" his breath puffed against my cheek. I could smell the thickness of it, like sulphur. "Aren't you just - breathless - from anticipation?"

"Yeah, I'm freakin' ecstatic. Now either use some mouthwash or get the fuck away from me." Weak, I know. I didn't have a head for insults today. My mind was too busy trying to wrap itself around whatever Alastair was up to. Needless to say I didn't trust the guy further than I could throw him and whatever his little plan was, I was pretty sure I wasn't going to like it.


	3. Chapter 3

They dragged a woman into the room and I half expected her to be kicking and screaming, but she wasn't. Her face was dull and there wasn't any fear in her eyes. Whatever fear she had felt had probably been tortured out of her long ago.

The two demons pulled her over to the wall and they strung her up, much the same way they had done with me, and then stepped away. Alastair smiled that sick smile of his and he stood in front of her. One long hand moved up and brushed up against her cheek, then up through her dark hair, gripping it tight and pulling her head back. He leaned in and brushed his mouth against the smooth, sweaty skin of her neck. And then he looked across her at me and his smiled widened.

"Whaddaya think, Dean? Think you're gonna enjoy watching this?"

A muscle twitched in my jaw, I could feel it, and I kept my eyes on Alastair. I knew what he was doing; I knew what he was trying to accomplish but I wasn't going to let him win with a trick this elementary.

"She's pretty, ain't she Dean," Alastair was talking to me but his eyes were on his victim. She returned his stare with a sort of resigned defiance that bothered me more than I thought it would. How long had she been down here in hell that facing off against the butcher held absolutely no fear for her?

I let my eyes wander over the woman and, yeah, I had to admit that she wasn't bad looking. Even with her slack face, I could see that she was had potential. "I wouldn't kick her outta bed," I answered, keeping my voice as light as I could. I didn't like the way her eyes turned to me as I spoke. She didn't say a word; she just stared at me with her dull, dead gaze. I kept up the eye contact as long as I could before I swallowed hard and turned my face away.

Alastair seemed to enjoy the tension in the air as he casually strolled over to his table of toys and selected a long, sharp knife. "Whaddaya think, Dean? This one looks good?" He held it up so that the light reflected off the blade, turning it to the left and then to the right. "Is this the one you'd choose?"

I clenched my jaw as my hands flexed open and shut. "Yeah, I'd choose it to shove up your ass."

"Language, Dean," Alastair just chuckled as he walked over to the bound girl. He tipped his head and smiled that greasy smile. "You wanna tell us your name, sweetheart?"

Her eyes were locked on the butcher. It was like she didn't even see the knife that he clutched in his hand. "Amanda," she said in a voice as flat as her eyes. "My name's Amanda."

The demon nodded. "How long have you been down here, Amanda?" He moved closer to her and played with a lank tendril of hair. If it had been me, I would've been jerking my head away but the woman just let his long fingers tangle in her limp waves.

"A long time," and she sighed just a little, just the slightest exhale of breath. "Almost seventy years."

"Hear that, Dean? She's been down here seventy years and I'm still torturing her." His shoulders moved upwards in a shrug as he continued to stroke his fingers through her hair. "I mean, most of the fight has gone outta her, but it doesn't matter. She still screams when I pull out her goddamn intestines." His fingers gripped tightly all of a sudden and he pulled her head back sharply – violently. But the girl didn't even gasp.

I couldn't take my eyes off of the two of them and I knew my face was disgusted. Hell, I could feel my stomach rolling as Alastair started to trace the thin knife down her jaw line, along her collar bone and against the curve of her breast. But – she just stood there. She didn't flinch. She didn't try to pull away. I felt my top lip curve up as the point of the knife circled around the woman's belly button then disappeared into the flesh. Alastair's eyes were on me the whole time; his smile widened as he gave the blade a cruel twist and then began to saw upwards.

He opened a gaping hole in Amanda's abdomen and I felt like I couldn't watch what the demon was doing, but what the hell else was I going to look at? The stone walls? Alastair's bright grin? No, it didn't matter where I was staring because I knew what he was doing. I could hear his breathing increase and when I looked at his face, it was frozen in maniacal glee.

"I wish you'd scream," he whispered, leaning in close to Amanda. His lips were on her earlobe. But he never took his goddamn eyes off of my face. I knew what he was waiting for; he was waiting for me to tell him to stop.

But I wasn't going to.

Alastair just chuckled and he plunged his hand into the open wound. The blood was pouring, soaking the dirt floor and turning it into thick, dark mud. The smell of it, the metallic, coppery scent of it hung in the air strong enough to make me gag. My lip curled again, wrinkling my nose. But I still couldn't turn my head away.

Amanda was hanging by her wrists – she had no fight in her, not one little bit. I imagine that she'd learned a long time ago that it would all be over soon. Her face was white except for the dark circles under her eyes; brownish black smudges like bruises. She was shaking, her whole body was trembling and tears were pouring down her cheeks, but she wasn't making any noise.

I wanted her to scream, though! I could feel my expression harden as a muscle in my jaw jumped slightly. I wanted her to scream and cry and beg Alastair to stop because it didn't seem fair that she could manage to keep her pain inside and I couldn't; that I was weaker than some girl. I swallowed hard and twisted my wrists in my bonds, watching Amanda with a hard stare. Could she really keep up the silent treatment for so long?

Alastair's long hands were red and slick and he had opened up the wound even more. The flesh hung in tattered strips on either side of the bloody hole and he was busy pulling things out. Long, slimy ropes of intestines that he held up for both Amanda and I to see, a thick piece of organ – I'm not sure which one it was, honestly. He was just throwing the stuff on the floor, smiling and humming to himself as he worked.

A sob suddenly sounded and for a moment, just for a moment, I wasn't sure if it was from Amanda or me. But I saw Alastair smile and nod and pause in his work. He stopped in mid-gut and looked up into the woman's face. "Didja say something, sweetheart?" he asked. His voice was cruelly sympathetic and his expression, just for a moment, was all knitted brows and concern.

Amanda's body jerked in the ropes holding her and she gave another gasping sob. Her slack lips opened and her head dropped forward. When she lifted her face, her cheeks were wet and mixing with the mucous from her nose and the spit from her open, sobbing mouth. Her body was trying to curl in on itself to protect itself but there was no strength left in her. She turned her face from the butcher and let out another wail.

"She's putting on a show," Alastair stepped back and put his hands on his hips. He seemed pleased. He shifted his hands so that one was curled over his chest and the other was cupping his chin in a contemplative way, leaving streaks of gore on his face. "I can't remember the last time she actually cried."

I didn't answer; I didn't know what to say. I stared, instead, at the woman as her chest heaved with each tortured breath of air. She wasn't looking at me; she wasn't looking at Alastair, either. Her face was turned away and she let her long hair fall in front of her face like a curtain.

I felt a bubble of disgust in my stomach as I stared at Amanda and then looked at Alastair. He was grinning to himself and when he caught my eye, he grinned even harder.

"You like the look of that, kiddo?" his voice was casual but he scowled slightly as he picked off a fleshy bit of – something – from his shirt and flicked it onto the ground. "You think you wanna be the one doing the cutting instead of being cut?"

I stared at Alastair because I didn't want to stare at Amanda. She was still crying and shaking, pulling at her ropes. She was whole again, at least. The rupture in her stomach was gone. But I still didn't want to look at her. And I got the feeling she didn't want me to look at her, either.

"How many times do I have to tell you before you get it through your thick skull," I kept my voice low, "you can take your fucking knives and you can gut yourself on them, d'ya understand?"

Alastair's eyes held no surprise even though he went through the motions of affecting it; his gaze widened and his mouth opened just a little. "You were really okay with poor Amanda going through your torture session today, Dean?" He pulled his head back slightly and looked at me with his brow quirked. "That's funny, you know, because what I heard about you made me think you'd rather chew on broken glass than let someone take a punishment for you."

I kept my expression neutral even though I wondered what angle Alastair was coming at me from. "What are you talking about, you son of a bitch."

He smiled unpleasantly. "Well, think about it, Dean. Think about when you and Sam were kids, huh? He'd do something wrong, break something, spill something – you'd jump up to take the blame so that he wouldn't get in trouble, right? You'd rather have daddy yelling at you than him."

My back stiffened and, in their bonds, my hands tightened into fists. I could feel my eyes narrow as I glared into the face of the butcher, daring him to keep talking.

"Of course," he continued breezily, "maybe that self-sacrificing behaviour doesn't extend to some random bitch that you've just met. You obviously didn't care that my little chew toy, Amanda, just went through a gutting for you. But I have to admit, Dean, that I was surprised. Knowing what I know about you, I thought you would have been screaming at me to stop cutting her – ordering me to let her go so you that she wouldn't be tortured anymore."

I blinked rapidly and I opened my mouth to answer Alastair, but nothing came out. He had a point, damn him. Normally I wouldn't have let anyone take a cutting for me, but I was so tired of it – so tired of being ripped open…

'Pathetic!' My mind screamed at me even as Alastair kept looking at me, waiting for me to say something. 'You dumb, pathetic son of a bitch! Amanda has been down here seventy years and she hardly said anything when Alastair cut her. You – you've barely been down here thirty years and you're already willing to let someone go in your place! What would dad think of you, huh? What would Sammy say?'

I made a weird noise, a half choke, in the back of my throat as I thought of Sam's reaction to what just happened. He would have been disgusted with me, letting that innocent woman go through what she had went through because I was too much of a coward to speak up and tell Alastair to stop. Of course, if Sam had been down here, he probably would have ripped Alastair a new asshole by this time, but that was beside the point. He would have been just as disgusted with me as I was with myself.

Alastair watched me for a few moments and then when he decided I wasn't going to say anything, he shrugged and glanced back towards the door. Two demons strode in and they let me down from the wall. For the first time in a very long time, I didn't tumble bonelessly to the floor. I stumbled a bit, yeah, but I managed to keep my balance. Amanda wasn't quite so lucky, though. When the two demons undid her ropes, she fell first to her knees and then forward. My first instinct was to move towards her and help her up, but the mooks grabbed my arms and held me back.

"Uh, uh, uh," Alastair shook his finger. "Why do you care, Dean? You let her get tortured for you, what does it matter if she falls?" He gave me a mirthless grin and then glanced up at his assistants. "Get him outta here."

I struggled against the two of them, but they were huge; their hands fit easily around my arms as they dragged me from the den. I could hear Alastair laughing as I was pulled down the hallway


End file.
